|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. Such umbrella agreements do not require stipulating general conditions of interactions within every contract as regards specific activities and, thus, facilitate the contract consent processes both at the U.S. DOE and the R.F. Minatom. Unfortunately, these interactions have been so far mainly a one-way street, because finances have been forwarded to Russia, whereas the scientific information has gone to the U.S. Currently more and more possibilities emerge to establish a balanced cooperation. 3. Impediments to Cooperation Between the U.S. and Russia on Nuclear NonproliferationAlong with positive results, the multi-year experience of the U.S.-Russian interactions on nuclear nonproliferation revealed a number of "weak points" and impediments hindering further development of the U.S.-Russian collaboration on the subject, some of them a matter of principle. The analysis undertaken in the present research made it possible to classify these problems as follows:
3.1. High-Level Political Issues3.1.1. Practices of the U.S. Congress to Link the Funding of CTR Projects to Unrelated Political Conditions. As it is explained by the U.S. side, such linkage results from peculiarities of the U.S. legislation, according to which the U.S. Congress can take yearly funding decisions related to the CTR program implementation only once the U.S. President confirms the fulfillment of the R.F. obligations on international agreements. As it is known, the lack of convincing evidence that Russia is fulfilling the Chemical Weapons Convention was the pretext to block CTR program funding in 2002. Later on this decision was suspended but only for a limited time. Quite a similar politically motivated situation is arising regarding the new U.S.-Russian Agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The U.S. is not willing to take such a step until Russia "freezes" its collaboration with Iran in the nuclear area, which, in the U.S. opinion, could contribute to the build-up of a military nuclear program in that country. Russia, as it was repeatedly stated, considers the U.S. concerns subjective and unjustified and has given multiple clarifications on this subject. Realizing that the U.S.-Russian cooperative
|
|
|||||||||||||||
